This is a pre-primary column I wrote on Sunday for Deadline Detroit:

 

By Chad Selweski

At a time when both political parties have come under fire in recent months for a supposedly rigged presidential nominating process, Michigan voters on Tuesday will mostly ignore the state primary election, not knowing that by doing so they’re getting scammed by a truly rigged system.

Some 80 percent of voters typically will stay home on primary day, letting others choose the nominees for offices in Congress and the Legislature. Because of partisan manipulations by the Democratic and Republican parties, those sitting out the primary will show up in November only to learn that the election results have — essentially, already, unfairly — been decided.

In legislative districts for U.S. House, the state House and county commissioner, the playing field is drawn in such a way that there are Republican districts and there are Democratic districts – and not much in between. The winner of the dominant party’s primary inevitably will be the winner in the general election. Geography is destiny.

The biggest manipulation at play is the undemocratic process of gerrymandering, where zig-zagging district lines are drawn by the party in power to favor the party in power. In Michigan, currently that means the Republicans, though the Democrats also engage in hyper-partisan maneuvers when they get the chance, including at the county level.

Consider this: According to Inside Michigan Politics, only one U.S. House district, the 1st, covering northern Michigan and the U.P., will feature a competitive race in the fall; and as few as a dozen of the 110 state House seats will be competitive.

We vote in August and November but this is not a two-step process. The primary does not represent the preliminaries before the main event.

Voters can bet that a whole lot of candidates have planned a nice long vacation after Tuesday’s primary because they know that the general election is merely a formality in their districts.

 

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